54. Things I learned in my marketing degree that are no longer true

First thing I learned in my marketing degree is that product launches take years.

I went to school in 2010 is when I started college.

So I graduated in 2024.

And during that time was when it was like the golden age of tech launches.

If we've ever gone and seen those YouTube videos of when Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were like dancing on stage as they're announcing the iMac and the iPhone.

So the iPhone came out when I was in high school.

But that is what a product launch looked like when I was in college.

So I was told, you know, things go into development and there's NDAs and then they take those products to focus groups and they let people touch them and they study the way that people touch them and what do they look at first and how do they react to different features and all of that.

And it was qualitative data, there was quantitative data, and then they would refine the product and then they would start a whole marketing campaign so they would send it from engineering to marketing, back to engineering, to...

Then marketing and then the sales team gets to sell it.

And that's pretty commonplace for just about every large company was some sort of flow like that.

So there were these huge launch windows of people would start developing something and it might not launch for five years.

But marketing already had a plan for how they were going to position it, how they were going to launch it.

In small businesses, we may plan pretty far in advance.

You guys know that I launched copy on demand in December, period.

So I kind of have an idea all year of, okay, these are the things I'm saying yes to.

This is where I'm building my list.

This is where I'm focusing on just delivering a really great experience to my people.

So it's strategic and it's planned out a year.

However...

A lot of people that hire me for VNP days come to me and say, Sam, I am launching in three weeks and realizing that my sales page sucks.

I need your help.

So what I'm saying here is that is there a right or a wrong way to do it? Kind of.

Theoretically, we would be planning for our launches months in advance.

However, if current events come up that make it a really perfect time for us to launch, why would we wait a full year? to put our offer in front of people? Why wouldn't we condense our timelines or just do both? That is the beauty of being in small business.